Mexico’s oil production is declining and violence by the drug cartels against the Mexican police and army is escalating. The government cannot maintain law and order as top police officials are gunned down and a mounting number of Mexican soldiers have died in battles against a well-armed criminal element. And a recession in America has cost illegal Mexicans jobs here, thus cutting back on remittances sent back to Mexico. Will America bear the brunt of Mexico’s troubles if the oil shortage becomes a full-blown crisis?

The fact is that Mexican President Felipe Calderon, looking for help, is enthusiastic about the merger of his nation with the United States and Canada (a security and economic community of North America with governing institutions) and he is working diligently toward that goal. (Photo: Mexican forces battle drug gangs in Tijuana.)

He wants private investment in Pemex, the Mexican state oil company, as called for in the Council on Foreign Relations plan for Building a North American Community but the Mexican Congress opposes any foreign control, citing the Mexican constitution. (CFR plan, pp. 15,16,17. Click here, then “full text” at bottom of U.S. State Dept. article, then English version, 295K PDF).

As Calderon has stated: “In the coming two decades, I envision the whole North American region…as a single region with a free market, not just in goods and services and investments, but also a free labor market. The region could be like the European Union.” (04/03/06)

Meanwhile, the government of Mexico is undergoing increased pressure due to loss of revenues from its declining oil production and a war on the cartels that is going badly. (A short history of the decline below.)

(02/09/06)- Mexico’s “huge state-owned oil company (Pemex) may be facing a steep decline in output that would further tighten global supply and add to global woes over high oil prices…”

“An internal study reviewed by The Wall Street Journal shows water and gas are encroaching more quickly than expected in Cantarell, Mexico’s biggest oil field, and might cause output to drop precipitously over the next few years.”

“The potential decline…could undermine US efforts to reduce dependence on Middle East oil, and complicate Mexican politics and financial stability.” (Mexico is the third largest oil supplier to the United States.)

(May, 2008)- Mexico, one of the world’s top 10 oil producing nations, has seen its oil production fall to a nine-year low. Production has dropped from 3.18m barrels per day in April of 2007 to 2.77m barrels per day in April of 2008.

In addition, Mexico needs to build more refineries. It currently imports gasoline for its national consumers and subsidizes the price, which, for the government, is going up while income is falling.

So even if Mexico receives foreign investment and expertise, it will take years to build those refineries, exploit the remaining oil and look for new fields.

Another problem is the security of the oil and gas pipelines in Mexico. On July 5th and 10th of 2007, a small but violent Marxist guerrilla group, the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), took responsibility for blowing up sections of the Pemex gas pipelines in Guanajuato state.

It was reported that “a Saudi Arabian terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda called for strikes on oil and gas installations in Canada, Mexico and Venezuela…” in February of 2007. (Photo: Mexican soldiers on scene of pipeline attack.)

The question. What happens when the time of reckoning arrives and the world is reeling from a series of events culminating in the first period of shortages: first oil, then food crops, commerce (interdependent world, you know), riots, violent overthrow of governments, breakdown of law and order and borders.

The United States would be hit hard. Mexico would be hit harder. The people of Mexico have no support system but they have an alternative. It’s called America.

We have about 20 million illegals in the United States. Whoever becomes president next year, Barack Obama or John McCain, will sign a comprehensive immigration bill.

It is an amnesty bill. But, as in other immigration bills, there will be no funding for processing these illegals, no infrastructure, no employees or agents to verify anything. They will simply remain here while many more cross that border.

Today, much of the Southwestern U.S. is, de facto, Mexico. Jeff Vail writes that:

“While no Nation-State is a perfect example of [the] ideal, Mexico’s proximity to enticing US labor markets, and the resulting massive immigration of Mexicans, is increasingly distorting this overlap (of boundaries). While ‘Mexico’ remains a powerful cultural concept, that concept is increasingly disassociated with the geographic borders of the Mexican state. People can be wholly ‘Mexican’ in Los Angeles, or, increasingly, Alabama.”

In a 2002 Zogby Poll, 58 percent of Mexicans agreed that “the territory of the United States Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico.” Also, 57 percent agreed that “Mexicans have the right to enter the U.S. without permission.”

In a worse case scenario, Mexicans, and many more from Latin America and the Caribbean, would head for the only place that can save them. And America, with a government that can no longer take care of its own citizens or its borders, would be helpless to defend against the onslaught.